TransAction 2: Carl + Jovanovic Weiss + Ferko

described by Peter Ferko

Curator Katherine Carl and Architect Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss proposed a TransAction concerning their project, Lost Highway Expedition. Srdjan is Serbian, Carl is American, they lived most recently in Basel, Switzerland. The Lost Highway Expedition took place last summer on a route between the capitals of the countries formerly combined as Yugoslavia.

The TransAction interchange was a collaboration in a multi-tiered circumstance that is probably best to outline:

1. Carl/Weiss were asked to collaborate with Neurotransmitter (Valerie Tevere and Angel Nevarez) on the project “FM Ferry Experiment.” FM Ferry Experiment was a radio transmission from the Staten Island Ferry conducted over three weekends in September. (Tevere and Nevarez participated in the Lost Highway Project.)
2. Katherine and Srdjan asked me to participate in the radio broadcast as a TransAction. It was clear from the beginning that I would most likely be doing the live broadcast from the boat on my own.
3. My contribution was to describe photographs taken on the Expedition, which I had heard much about, but was unable to attend. I had no idea what the photos were of, but I did have the chance to see them beforehand.
4. Schedules required us to come up with a plan B, as none of us seemed available for the boat. So we made a recording to submit as our collaboration.
5. An interesting development was that I had become available to do the broadcast live, so we knew going into the recording that I would be using the recording as a backup, if at all. The recording of that event is here as an MP3 below.
6. When the date came, I boarded the boat to do a performance in which I re-enacted my improvisation of descriptions of places I’d never been, and played segments from the recording of my globe-trotting collaborators, who had refrained from speaking during my descriptions (as a way of implying not being there); while Neurotransmitter, who had been there and were there now, were too busy dealing with the challenges of broadcasting from a working ferry to be able to listen live (but will be putting podcasts of the show online). We were required to tear down the studio during my segment and concluded it about an hour later on another boat. Valerie resorted to “cell-casting” a portion from her mobile phone while Angel re-set up the studio. The film crew shooting footage for a documentary on radio was happy to have the action!

Every layer of the circumstance was a source of excitement, and I felt that the art that emerged was successful; the entire TransAction was priceless in terms of helping me be a part of an Expedition I had hoped to join, and in meeting new artists Tevere and Nevarez, whose work I had admired from afar.

MP3 of the TransAction.

Some of the images described:

by Kyong Park

by Ana Dzokic

by Giulia Fiocca & Laia Solé

by TBD

by Ana Dzokic

  by Kyong Park

more to come…